Gov. Tim Pawlenty proposed tough new penalties for sex offenders Tuesday, saying sentences for those who commit serious crimes against children should be more than doubled.

Under the proposal, those convicted of first-degree sex offenses would see their presumptive sentence go from 12 years to 25 years. Those with criminal histories likely would see tougher penalties.

“Sex offenders in our state and across the country continue to present a very serious challenge to the safety of our fellow citizens and to our communities and to our families,” Pawlenty said. “They need to be kept off the street for as long as possible, and Minnesota’s current law in that regard can be even further improved.”

It is the governor’s second effort at bolstering penalties for sex crimes. In 2005, the state passed a package of get-tough sentencing reforms, which included the first sentences of life without the possibility of parole for the most serious sex offenders.

But in announcing Tuesday’s proposal, Pawlenty expressed unhappiness with the way some of those reforms have been implemented by courts. From 2006 to 2008, the latest year for which numbers are available, only seven people received the life without parole sentence.

“It’s been a helpful tool but not used as much as we would like,” he said.

The sentencing proposal comes as the Legislature debates a $90 million expansion of the state’s sex offender civil commitment program in Moose Lake.

Since its creation two decades ago, 551 men and one woman have been sent to the program after their criminal sentences ended, and the number has been steadily increasing since college student Dru Sjodin’s 2003 murder. Minnesota has the highest per capita number of civil commitments in the nation.

Over the next seven years, the number of civilly committed sex offenders is expected to rise by about 65 a year. The program is expected to reach capacity within three years.

Pawlenty included the expansion money in his proposed state bonding bill, a biannual proposal that funds state construction projects. But Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers did not include it, saying the growth in the program must be reviewed.

It is expensive. To meet constitutional mandates for keeping offenders past their release from prison, the state spends $325 per day on those individuals rather than the $63 daily it spends on prison inmates. And no one has ever been released from the program.

Pawlenty said longer prison sentences may help cut down on those costs. And while Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Mee Moua, DFL-St. Paul, said she is all for locking up offenders longer if needed, she said further study is needed to determine the cost.

“A lot more people than those potentially diverted from civil commitment will be going to prison for a lot longer,” Moua said.

In 2008, courts issued 582 sentences for sex crimes, including 144 for first-degree crimes. That year, the Minnesota Department of Corrections recommended to county attorneys that 151 sex offenders scheduled for release be civilly committed.

From 2008 to 2009, however, judges ordered only 38 offenders into the civil program, which includes extensive therapy and regular polygraph testing.

According to a one-day snapshot from July 2009, there were 9,353 inmates in the Minnesota prison system, 1,646 of whom were serving time for sex crimes. Nearly half of those were first-degree offenders with crimes involving children.

Sex crimes make up the second-largest category of prison sentences in Minnesota, behind only drug crimes.

In 2008, the average prison sentence for first-degree offenders was actually more than 16.5 years, compared with a little more than 12 years a decade earlier, according to the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. Offenders’ criminal histories typically add length to sentences.

Yet judges do seem to be shortening sentences more often than they did before the 2005 reforms.

In 1998, judges gave sex offenders lesser sentences than the guidelines 13 percent of the time and gave a tougher sentence 22 percent of the time.

By 2008, those numbers changed dramatically — judges departed downward 18 percent of the time and upward just 8 percent of the time in just 18 cases out of 229.

However, the full impact of the reforms may not be known yet, because only about two-thirds of the offenders sentenced in 2008 were sentenced under the new guidelines. Typically, sex crimes can take longer to be reported and move more slowly through the courts.

The state’s sex offender civil commitment program is often debated, especially because no one has ever been released. Four offenders have reached the final stages of the program.

That debate reached the floor of the Minnesota Senate on Tuesday after Pawlenty’s announcement.

“We can’t allow civil commitment to be a substitute for incarceration. We’re not allowed to do that under the constitution,” said Sen. Mary Olson, DFL-Bemidji, an attorney. However, “moving in the direction of increasing prison sentences for sex offenders is the right thing to do,” she added.

Asked whether lengthier sentences, when combined with long civil commitments, might form a de facto life sentence that triggers further constitutional questions, Moua said it needs to be looked at.

“It may. That’s one of the considerations that we need to think about and talk about.”

ONLINE SAFETY

Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Tuesday also announced a new child Internet safety initiative that would make available to all Minnesota schools an “age-appropriate” interactive package of materials warning children about online sexual predators.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in News

Drivers along Ayd Mill Road in St. Paul call it one of the most pockmarked roadways in town. Winter melt, age, traffic intensity, deferred maintenance and questionable construction all have taken their toll. St. Paul city officials are continually grappling with the challenge of funding road repair for a growing residential and business population. Outsiders sometimes make unfair comparisons to...

St. Paul Saints general manager Derek Sharrer's stomach was doing backflips as he watched No. 16 seed Maryland-Baltimore County beat No. 1 overall seed Virginia. The team he’s in charge of was about to be out $10,000.

A marker on the Hillcrest Golf Course proclaims the Hillcrest Knoll to be Ramsey County's highest hilltop, though folks in Arden Hills and Shoreview might dispute it. Soon, the 1920s-era golf course may have another claim to fame -- housing, and lots of it. At Larpenteur Avenue and McKnight Road on the city's Greater East Side, Hillcrest represents 112 acres...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The hunt for the serial bomber who has been leaving deadly explosives in packages on Austin doorsteps took a new, more sinister turn Monday when investigators said the fourth and latest blast was triggered along a street by a nearly invisible tripwire.